My invention relates to track laying vehicles such as tanks and is particularly directed at the vehicles' connections between tracks and sprockets driving the tracks.
One drawback of tracked vehicles is the high rate of wear on the track and associated components such as road wheels and drive. sprockets. A particular concern is wear and fatigue of teeth on drive sprockets. I address this concern by an improved double drive sprocket and an improved connection between this sprocket and the track.
My sprocket and connection has outer gear teeth on the sprocket. The outer gear teeth mesh with track links connecting a row of individual track units together. The sprocket has additional, inner gear teeth engaging sinusoidal surfaces in wells of the track units. The sprocket has a continuous land surface which has an annular zone between the inner and outer teeth and which has land surface portions between the inner teeth. The annular land zone contacts surfaces around the wells when the sprocket engages the track. The inner teeth, the outer teeth, or both, have inserts at tooth bearing surfaces. The inserts comprise a matrix of material more elastic than the teeth and have inclusions within the matrix more wear resistant than the teeth. Surfaces of the inserts protrude outward from the teeth's bearing surfaces so as to accept most of the load directed at the teeth and to maintain a variable tolerance gap between the teeth.